Cracks in the Sidewalk (35 page)

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

W
hen Claire arrived at the church on Sunday morning, the last thing she expected to see was a room full of noisy kindergartners, twenty-seven in all. When Louise asked for Sunday School help, Claire had envisioned a class of adults like the Bible study she’d attended five years ago. She’d never considered that a woman in her eighties would teach children.

“I don’t know if I can handle this many kids,” she whispered in her friend’s ear.

“Of course you can,” Louise answered, then she shoved a tub of crayons toward Claire and told her to put a handful in the center of each table. “Mix them up so there’s an assortment of colors on each table.”

Louise turned to the whirlwind of kids who were talking, laughing, chasing one another, and, in one case, crouching beneath the table, and she clapped her hands—once, twice, slight pause, then three quick claps. Suddenly the noise stopped, and the children repeated the clapping pattern. Clap, clap, pause, clap, clap, clap. Once the room got quiet, Louise asked in a thin, delicate voice, “What time is it?”

Claire glanced at her watch, but a chorus of little voices shouted, “Learning time!”

With no word of direction, the children scurried toward the center of the room and sat on the floor. The only exception was the boy from beneath the table. He sat apart from the group, head hanging low and his back pushed against the wall.

Claire went and squatted beside the boy. “You look awfully sad,” she whispered.

He nodded almost imperceptibly but kept his chin tucked to his chest.

“I’m sorry you’re feeling sad,” she said sympathetically. “Maybe if you tell me your name, I could do something.”

“Adam.”

“Well, Adam, do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

He kept his eyes focused on the floor and shrugged.

Claire wrapped her arm around the lad’s shoulder. “If you tell me the problem, maybe I can fix it.”

“My shoe’s untied.”

Claire squeezed his shoulder. “Well, that’s easy enough to fix.”

He pulled his right foot from beneath his leg, and she saw a brown shoelace flopping loose on both ends. Claire tightened the laces and looped the two loose ends into a bow.

Adam lifted his head and smiled.

“How about we go listen to the rest of Miss Louise’s story?”

Adam nodded.

When Claire stood he took hold of her hand, and when he lowered himself into the crowd of his classmates he tugged her down alongside of him. 

~ ~ ~

A
fter the story there was a prayer and another round of clapping, then Louise announced it was time for pageant practice.

“Yea!” the chorus echoed gleefully.

“Can I be the partridge?” a voice called out.

“No, Brenda,” Louise answered, “Sara is the partridge. You’re a French hen.”

“Why does Sara get—”

“Because she’s smaller and the tree platform is only big enough for a very small person.” Louise motioned to a group of boys. “Calling Birds, over here.”

Adam still clung to Claire when Louise wriggled a finger at him. “You’re a Turtle Dove.   You should be next to Tommy.” Adam slid his hand from Claire’s and moved to stand alongside a dark-haired boy with round glasses.

“Okay,” Louise said. “Now, everyone, stay with your group.” She waved toward Claire. “You take the partridge, turtle doves, French hens, and calling birds. I’ll get the rest.”

“Take them where?”

“You don’t
take
them anywhere.” Louise chuckled. “Just teach them their parts of the song.”

Claire stood there slightly petrified.

“It’s easy,” Louise assured her. “We start with the partridge sitting in the tree and she sings the first verse, then the turtle doves come on stage and they sing the second verse, and so on. Everybody joins in on the chorus.”

“Okay,” Claire answered nervously. She turned to the group in front of her. “Do you all know the song?”

The partridge nodded as did two hens, one calling bird, and one turtle dove. The remainder shook their heads.

“Well,” she said, remembering how she’d once taught the refrain to Elizabeth, “this song is actually a story. It tells about all the wonderful Christmas presents a man bought for his true love. On each day of the Christmas season, he gave her a very special gift.”

“Was he a prince?” someone asked.

“He might have been,” Claire answered. “On the very first day, he gave his love a partridge in a pear tree. Sara, that’s you. The pageant opens with you sitting in the tree and you get to sing, ‘On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree.’”

“By myself?” a wide-eyed Sara asked.

“Yes, won’t that be fun?”

Sara twisted her face into displeasure.

“How about we’ll sing together until you get comfortable with doing it?”

“What if I never get comfortable?”

“Then the night of the pageant I’ll hide behind the tree and sing along with you.”

Sara smiled. “Really?”

“Cross my heart.”

Once Sara began singing things moved along smoothly. The two calling birds added some wing-flapping to their verse and one of the French hens got the hiccups, which caused a lot of giggling. After what seemed like minutes, Louise repeated her clapping routine and announced that the dress rehearsal would be at seven o’clock on Tuesday evening.

“You’ll need to try on your costumes, so be on time!” She turned to Claire. “You too.”

“Me? But I’m temporary. I’m only helping out.”

“You’re directing the first four days of Christmas.” 

Claire hadn’t planned on directing anything, especially a bunch of kindergartners with stage fright, but when she looked down and saw Adam beaming up at her, she answered, “Okay.”

~ ~ ~

T
hat afternoon Claire plopped down in Charlie’s recliner and gave a sigh of relief. “I’m glad this is temporary,” she said.

“Why?”

Claire thought about it but found she didn’t have an answer. True, the time flew by, which was generally a sign a person was enjoying themselves, but she’d come away with an odd sense of sadness. It felt as if the hole in her heart left by the loss of their grandchildren had somehow grown larger. And singing that song, turning it into a story as she had with Elizabeth, brought back so many memories.

After a long while she answered, “I really can’t say.”

That’s how it went for the next two days. One moment Claire would be troubled by the flood of memories pushing their way into her head, and the next she’d find herself wondering how to get Sara past her stage fright.

The children in the class were the same age as David and a number of boys also had dark hair and dark eyes, but Claire turned her attention to someone else. Adam had hair as light as corn silk and eyes the color of a cement walkway. He was timid and frail, nothing like her grandson. Yet something about the boy haunted Claire. She remembered him crouched under the table and sitting alone. There was a certain sadness in Adam’s eyes, one that Claire simply couldn’t forget. When she thought about how he’d sat with his head bowed as if the weight of the world pressed down on it, Claire could believe Adam’s heart hurt as much as hers.

The night of the dress rehearsal Adam cautiously peered into the room, but once he spotted Claire he ran to her and wrapped his skinny little arms around her knees. He was a child she could so easily love, but Claire’s heart warned, “He’s not yours.”

The funny thing about love is that sometimes it latches on to you when you’re looking to run the other way. And apparently Adam had decided to love Miss Claire whether she wanted him to or not.

T
he night of the pageant the temperature plummeted to ten degrees, and even though the furnace was fired to its maximum the church auditorium remained colder than cold—frosty. Teeth chattered, hands were pocketed, and overcoats remained buttoned. 

“I’m freezing!” the partridge said.

“Leave both sweaters on under your costume,” Claire replied. “That will help.”

“I’m too cold to sing.”

“It’ll warm up when the furnace gets going.”

As she dabbed a bit of glue on the calling bird’s loose plume, a masculine voice called, “Are you Miss Claire?”

The sound of an adult in the midst of all those children caught her ear. “Yes, I am,” she answered as she turned toward him.

“I’m Dorothy’s dad,” he said. “Sorry, but Dorothy has the flu and can’t come tonight.” He handed Claire his daughter’s French hen costume. “Hopefully you can get someone else to fill in.”

“There
is
no one.”

“Sorry,” he repeated then left.

The partridge, who now had a stream of tears rolling down her face, repeated, “I’m still too cold to sing.”   

Claire gathered the little girl into her arms. “Sara,” she whispered, “are you afraid you’ll forget the words if you have to sing alone?”

The girl nodded.

“Okay,” Claire said. “A promise is a promise. When the curtain opens and you’re sitting in the tree, I’ll be hiding behind it and I’ll sing with you. That way you won’t forget any of the words.”

“Okay.” The partridge smiled and flapped her wings.

“Good.” Claire laughed. “Very good.”

The backstage room of the auditorium was crowded with people, mostly kids, but Claire had yet to see Louise. She stood and looked across the sea of heads. With her snow-white hair Louise should have been easy enough to spot, but—

“I’m not gonna be a stupid hen!” Brenda shouted as she began to remove her costume.

Rushing over Claire asked, “What seems to be the problem?”

“I’m not gonna be a French hen. People will laugh at me.”

“What makes you think they’ll laugh?”

Brenda, the tallest and chunkiest child in the class, placed her hands on her chubby hips and stood there with a rebellious glare fixed on her face.

“Because the song says
three
!” she said angrily. “Three French hens, not two!”

“I’m trying to get a replacement for Dorothy. As soon as I find Miss Louise—”

“I wanna be the partridge!”

“Brenda, dear, I’ve already explained, the platform is too small to hold you—”

“I don’t care!”

“Brenda,” Claire bent and whispered in the girl’s ear, “I chose you to be a French hen because they’re the stars of the show. The French hens get to stand in the middle of the stage, right in front!”

Brenda smiled. “Really?”

Claire nodded. “Everyone in the audience is going to be busy looking at you, and they won’t even notice if a hen is missing.”

Brenda smiled and strutted off, waving her tail feathers.

Claire continued searching for Louise. Finally she spotted Pastor Branford edging his way through the crowd.

“Excuse me,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder. “I haven’t been able to find Louise Farley yet. Have you seen—”

“She’s down with the flu and asked if you would take over the supervision of her group.”

“Me? But I don’t know—”

Pastor Branford, obviously preoccupied with something else, said, “Thanks,” then moved on.

“Oh, dear,” Claire murmured as she started through the room rounding up gold rings, geese, and swans. As it turned out one of the gold rings had his costume on backward, two geese were also home with the flu, and one swan had a broken wing.

“Five minutes ‘til curtain,” the pageant director announced.

Claire quickly scotch-taped the broken wing, reversed the gold ring costume, and went with four instead of six geese. She bunched each group together in the order of appearance on stage.

“I’ll be behind the tree,” she said, “so watch closely. When I give the signal, the group at the head of the line comes on stage singing. Now remember, you come onstage one group at a time, and you have to wait until I give the signal for your group. Okay?”

“Okay,” they answered, but Claire felt a nervous bubble bouncing around her stomach.

“One minute ‘til curtain.”

Claire hoisted Sara onto the platform. “Are you okay?”

Sara nodded wordlessly.

The house lights dimmed, the curtain opened, and the music started, but not a sound came from Sara. Finally Claire, who had squatted behind the tree, began singing a flat and somewhat off-key rendition of the song.

“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…”

A roar of laughter came from the audience.

Claire kept singing but turned her head, peeking through the grid of the tree to check on Sara. The partridge now stood on the platform flapping her wings.

“Sit down,” Claire hissed as she signaled for the two turtle doves.

They came in on cue singing and moved to their assigned spot on the stage without incident.

The hens came next. Claire gave the signal but Brenda, preoccupied with a loose feather, failed to notice so the hens made a late entrance and Claire was already singing, “…three French hens…” The laughter from the audience sounded louder than before.

Claire peeked again. “Oh no,” she moaned. It was bad enough to have two French hens instead of the required three, but Brenda was strutting across the stage like a bandy rooster.